# Payload Software Reviews, Demo & Pricing - 2026 > Review of Payload Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs. Source: https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/payload-cms-profile --- [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Headless CMS Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/headlesscms-comparison/) / Payload Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. Overview [Reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/payload-cms-profile/reviews/)[Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/payload-cms-profile/alternatives/) # Payload 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing Wondering if Payload is right for your organization? Our Headless CMS Software selection experts can help you in 15 minutes or less. On this page - Overview - User Interface - Popular Alternatives - Pricing and Plans - Features - Integrations - User Reviews - Popular Comparisons ## Overview Payload 4.9 [(48)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/payload-cms-profile/reviews/) Pricing Starting at $35.00 per month ### About Payload Payload is an open-source content management system built with React, GraphQL, and TypeScript. It caters to developers and agencies building websites and applications. It has a GraphQL API and REST API to retrieve and rewrite content on a unified platform. Payload can be deployed on any infrastructure that supports Node.js, such as AWS, GCP, and Azure. The tool lets the open-source community and the team provide support to customers through GitHub. Wondering if Payload is right for your organization? Our Headless CMS Software selection experts can help you in 15 minutes or less. ## Payload User Interface ## Popular Payload Alternatives Main Product Payload 4.9 [(48)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/payload-cms-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.75Ease of use - 4.94Value for money - 4.79Customer support - 4.67Functionality Pricing Starting at $35.00 per month Get Price Alternative Product [Kontent.ai](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/kontico-kontent-profile/) 4.5 [(52)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/kontico-kontent-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.44Ease of use - 4.26Value for money - 4.70Customer support - 4.21Functionality Pricing Available upon request Get Price Alternative Product [Strapi](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/strapi-profile/) 4.6 [(66)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/strapi-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.48Ease of use - 4.65Value for money - 4.26Customer support - 4.47Functionality Pricing Starting at $99.00 per month Get Price Alternative Product [Agility CMS](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/agilitycms-profile/) 4.4 [(48)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/agilitycms-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.42Ease of use - 4.11Value for money - 4.54Customer support - 4.09Functionality Pricing Available upon request Get Price Alternative Product [Contentful](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/contentful-profile/) 4.5 [(63)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/contentful-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.18Ease of use - 4.28Value for money - 4.13Customer support - 4.36Functionality Pricing Starting at $300.00 per month Get Price Alternative Product [Croct](https://www.softwareadvice.com/product/514707-Croct/) 4.9 [(13)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/product/514707-Croct/#reviews) Ratings Breakdown - 4.69Ease of use - 4.54Value for money - 5.0Customer support - 4.77Functionality Pricing Available upon request Get Price ## Payload Pricing and Plans Starting price: $35.00 per month Free Trial Free Version Basic $35.00 per month No plan information available Confused about pricing? 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Get a personalized pricing breakdown tailored to your specific needs—no guesswork, no generic estimates. ## Payload Features - Popular features found in Headless CMS Access Controls/Permissions API Content Publishing Options Multi-Channel Marketing - More features of Payload A/B Testing Approval Process Control Asset Lifecycle Management Categorization/Grouping Collaboration Tools Configurable Workflow Content Library Content Management Customizable Forms Customizable Templates De-Coupled Front & Back Ends Document Management Drag & Drop Filtering For Developers For Marketers Full Text Search Historical Reporting Image Editing Mobile Access Multi-Channel Distribution Multi-Channel Management Multi-Language Preview Functionality Rich Text Editor Role-Based Permissions Rule Based Publishing Scheduling SDKs SEO Management Single Sign On Tagging Template Management Text Editing Third-Party Integrations Two-Factor Authentication User Management Version Control Web Forms Website Management Workflow Management ## Payload Integrations Zapier Integration rated undefined from -1 review Stripe Integration rated undefined from -1 review Datadog Integration rated undefined from -1 review Okta Integration rated undefined from -1 review HubSpot CRM Integration rated undefined from -1 review Algolia Integration rated undefined from -1 review ## Payload User Reviews Overall Rating 4.9 Ratings Breakdown 5 88% 4 13% 3 0% 2 0% 1 0% Secondary Ratings Ease of Use 4.8 Value for money 4.9 Customer support 4.8 Functionality 4.7 Hrithik U. Verified reviewer Information Technology and Services 11-50 employees Used weekly for less than 6 months Review source Reviewed August 2024 Best Headless CMS 5 Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: The packed-in features, robust scalability and support from the Payload team outperform every other option! Cons: I do not have anything to pinpoint as such, but there are absolutely more features to come in and once it does, Payload is going to be the top option for many. Read More JH Jay H. Verified reviewer Marketing and Advertising 11-50 employees Used daily for less than 12 months Review source Reviewed August 2024 Payload: An open source Headless CMS you'll love 5 Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: Payload offers the best developer and content manager experience of all the headless CMSs we've tried. It's open source, and the Payload team are very supportive and easy to reach. Cons: Like all headless CMSs there's a learning curve compared to a traditional CMS like WordPress. It's dashboard UI can be a little underwhelming for users first trying the product. Reasons for switching to Payload Payload is open source, flexible and offers a great developer experience. Read More AT Amit T. Verified reviewer Health, Wellness and Fitness 201-500 employees Used daily for less than 6 months Review source Reviewed May 2023 Bottom line: Recommanded 4 Ratings Breakdown 4 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: Modular, easy to develop, and deploy. You can do basically everything you want w/ very ease. Cons: You need to code everything you want to do & you don't have a lot of ready-to-use extensions yet. Read More JE Jennifer E. Verified reviewer Computer Software Self-Employed Used daily for less than 2 years Review source Reviewed May 2023 The Headless CMS every Dev has been waiting for 5 Overall it will be my go-to backend for any kind of software. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: Payload CMS was a total gamechanger for my development experience. I have been researching a Headless CMS that is easy to customize and extend for over a year until I stumbled upon Payload. From the get go the documentation was very extensive, getting a hang on it was very easy and now the process of creating a CMS that is fit to the customers need is done in a fracture of the time. Easy WordPress replacement. Also the response times within the Community are very fast if you have questions and the founders are always there for a chat and take recommondations thoughtfully Cons: While extension of the UI is possible, a layout builder with Drag and Drop features (eg. as a Plugin) would be great. Reasons for choosing Payload Its easy to setup and features are easily integrated - nothing new to learn Reasons for switching to Payload Too much maintanance with 3rd Party Dependencies and Security Issues Read More VR Verified Reviewer Consumer Electronics 11-50 employees Used weekly for less than 2 years Review source Reviewed May 2023 The CMS that everyone was waiting for! 5 Overall, the cms is great and easy to use for website backends, but also as apis or internal tooling. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: Payload is the most user friendly and developer oriented cms I’ve used so far. Its customisability and ease of use while keeping the express app fully accessible works great for us. Also the localisation is a lot better, since it works perfect in combination with generating routes necessary for NextJS dynamic routes. Cons: Honestly, the only thing I’ve heard from our users is that the admin interface looks to basic. I rather see that as a good thing. It’s clean and easy to understand. Reasons for choosing Payload Prismic didn’t offer good functionally to generate localised paths needed for nextjs dynamic pages. Strapi made custom blocks and relations within far more difficult than necessary. Reasons for switching to Payload We are currently rewriting our Wordpress site to run on NextJS and payload as a cms. Read More LV Lou V. Verified reviewer Internet 2-10 employees Used daily for less than 12 months Review source Reviewed May 2023 Amazing experience with Payload CMS! 5 Payload CMS makes a clear cut between the developer side and setup of the different fields and entries and the editor experience. It feels extremely nice to share the stack we work with between the frontend and the backend. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 4 Functionality Pros: Payload is all we can want in terms of balance between developer experience and editor experience. The backend is extremely easily extendable, the administration panel UI is clean and easy to use. We love the tool and we truly believe this is the future of open-source CMSs. Cons: At the moment the CMS is only limited to MongoDB databases but we know the team at Payload is hard working on a Postgres adapter that will ceil the deal for us. It might even not be the case anymore when you read this review. Reasons for choosing Payload The technical stack and the way Payload is build suits our teams habits perfectly. It is extensible and hyper flexible. It bridges out backend and frontend setup nicely. Reasons for switching to Payload After switching to a fully headless setup, we quickly ran into limitations with the well known options on the market. Payload has solved many of these caveats and it is really evolving in the right direction. Read More AL Audrius L. Verified reviewer Design 2-10 employees Used daily for less than 12 months Review source Reviewed May 2023 Unrivaled CMS experience both for website admins and for developers 5 Absolutely everything, from the community, to the actual product. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: The developer experience which enables anyone who knows javascript to customize both how the admin panel looks and how the backend works is just mind blowing. We've recently went on a journey to find the perfect CMS for our react/next based websites and I can with 100% confidence say that absolutely nothing compares to Payload. Cons: When not using Payload Cloud, hosting Payload can sometimes be pretty confusing, having everything set up perfectly. But once you do it once or twice, it's a piece of cake. Other than that there are no negatives. Reasons for choosing Payload Historically, working with headless CMS'es for react/next projects has been pretty hard. There were no CMS products that would have both excelent DX and be completely customizable for the end user (client admins). Payload does it all and with flying colors. Reasons for switching to Payload In almost every part of the comparable product features, payload delivers and over-delivers. Read More VR Verified Reviewer Online Media 51-200 employees Used daily for less than 6 months Review source Reviewed May 2023 Best Headless CMS 5 I am using it in a federal organization and currently for a project where you can create templates via forms. It helped a lot because the setup was very quick and we could focus on the development and the Editors on the content. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: The best thing about Payload is that it is very flexible- So you can use it for any kind of Project. Everything you need comes out of the box but you can also expand it as you like. You can create everything in code and you do not need any kind of GUI to create a Schema. Also everything is in Typescript so it makes the developement process really easy and fast. As a Big Compny you can easily White label it and customize it as you whish. Cons: The only thing is that it is pretty new on the market so you will not find many ressources - but that is not really a prolem because the documentation is really good and their discord server and the community behind it is even better. Reasons for choosing Payload because it met all the requirements - selfhosted- All in code- mongoDB- easy expandable Reasons for switching to Payload Payload is far better in every aspect Read More EJ Eric J. Verified reviewer Information Technology and Services Self-Employed Used daily for less than 12 months Review source Reviewed May 2023 Excellent CMS for developers who want easy customization 5 Payload provides a very fast, lightweight CMS solution that I can self-host for free and customize as desired. It works well with modern web frameworks like NextJS as well, which makes it a good headless CMS option or people using that framework. Ratings Breakdown 4 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: It is developer-friendly, being code-first and written entirely in TypeScript. It is easy to self-host and deploy. The documentation is excellent and allows developers to add customizations and develop their own plugins. Unlike many other CMS's, Payload is relatively unopinionated. And their developer team is very responsive to issues raised on their GitHub page. Cons: There isn't much that I dislike about it. Because it is unopinionated, it is also a bit skeletal, so you do have to do a bit of work to get something you want up and running. Reasons for choosing Payload It is free and open-source. Its documentation is excellent. Reasons for switching to Payload Payload is less opinionated, faster, and easier to customize. Read More ZS Zsolt S. Verified reviewer Computer Software 2-10 employees Used daily for less than 12 months Review source Reviewed May 2023 Best Headless CMS on the market 5 It helps us develop our sites faster than before. We do not need to code every CRUD page and it helps us to focus more on the custom elements that are necessary for the customers. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: We have tried many headless CMS projects, but Payload was the first that was easy to develop, and easy to extend and tailor it to the customers specification. It helps us build our projects faster and easier than other software. Cons: It only supports MongoDB at the moment, which is not always optimal, but they are working on supporting other databases. You need to have basic JavaScript/TypeScript knowledge to get started. It is not a con for us, but it may be for others. Reasons for switching to Payload It was easier to develop and deploy, and we had the most experience with Payloads tech stack, so it was faster to customize it. Read More Showing 1 - 10 of 48 Reviews [See All Reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/payload-cms-profile/reviews/) ## Payload Popular Comparisons [Kontent.ai vs Payload](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/kontico-kontent-profile/vs/payload-cms/)[Strapi vs Payload](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/payload-cms-profile/vs/strapi/)[Agility CMS vs Payload](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/agilitycms-profile/vs/payload-cms/)[Contentful vs Payload](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/contentful-profile/vs/payload-cms/) [Compare All Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/payload-cms-profile/alternatives/) ## Other Top Recommended Headless CMS Software [Centralpoint](https://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/centralpoint-profile/) **4.6** (9) Recently recommended **3** times [Agility CMS](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/agilitycms-profile/) **4.4** (48) Recently recommended **1** times [Strapi](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/strapi-profile/) **4.6** (66) Recently recommended **0** times [Contentful](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/contentful-profile/) **4.5** (63) Recently recommended **0** times Stuck Between Options? 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